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Poverty is a persistent problem in the United States, affecting millions of people and many areas of public policy. Nevertheless, public officials have said relatively little about poverty in recent years. What do ordinary Americans think about poverty and government's role in fighting it? This article summarizes two decades of survey data-drawing on ANES, Gallup, NORC/GSS, Pew, and other national polls-to help answer these questions. Americans generally feel positively toward the poor, believe that fighting poverty should be a high priority for government, and favor spending more on the poor. But many people remain skeptical of "welfare," worry about dependence on government aid, and are dissatisfied with past efforts to reduce poverty. Thus, officials could interpret existing polls as a sign to increase or decrease government's role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence is growing that Wales was a distinctive ‘welfare region’ under the New Poor Law. Higher rates of out-relief, tense relations with London and a deep dislike of the workhouse system marked the Principality out as different. This article considers Welsh distinctiveness in the context of the ‘crusade against out-relief’. Launched in the early 1870s, the crusade saw out-relief numbers tumble nationally. Little is known about the crusade in Wales but it is often assumed that it was a non-event. It is argued here that this is entirely incorrect. Official statistics reveal that tens of thousands of outdoor paupers in Wales had their relief stopped. Crusaders were successful partly due to the misleading way the Poor Law inspectorate used official figures to portray Wales as a district on the brink of crisis. The turning of outdoor paupers into ‘folk devils’ by sections of the Welsh press was also pivotal. Welsh distinctiveness was not eradicated during the crusade, but it was eroded. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study investigates the effects of welfare reform in the United States in the 1990s on voting among low-income women. Using the November Current Population Surveys with the added Voting and Registration Supplement for the years 1990 through 2004 and exploiting changes in welfare policy across states and over time, we estimate the causal effects of welfare reform on women's voting registration and voting participation during the period in which welfare reform unfolded. During this time period, voter turnout was decreasing in the United States. We find robust evidence that welfare reform led to smaller declines in voting (about 3 to 4 percentage points, which translates to about 10% relative to the baseline mean) for women who were exposed to welfare reform compared to several different comparison groups of similar women who were much less exposed. The robust findings suggest that welfare reform had prosocial effects on civic participation, as characterized by voting. The effects were largely confined to presidential elections, were stronger in Democratic than Republican states, were stronger in states with stronger work incentive policies, and appeared to operate through employment, education, and income. (JEL D72, H53, I38, J21) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Japan's stagnant economy has produced increasing income disparities, and the effect of poverty on health and health-care utilization is a significant issue. Co-payments could be a trade-off for patients when seeking medical care and limit health-care utilization. We sought primary care physicians' experiences in dealing with financially deprived patients and their perspectives about reducing co-payments by low-income patients. Methods: We used a convergent mixed-methods approach in a mail survey; it was distributed to 1989 primary care physicians practicing in areas with the highest proportions of socially disadvantaged individuals in Tokyo. The survey items included an open-ended question, seeking the participants' perspectives about reducing co-payments by low-income patients from the current 30%, and closed questions, asking their experience of patient behavior related to financial burdens during the previous 6 months. Results: We analyzed the responses of 365 physicians. Sixty-two percent of the primary care physicians agreed with lowering co-payments for financially deprived patients; however, the remainder disagreed or were uncertain. Those who disagreed were less likely to have experienced patient behavior related to financial burdens. The participants suggested challenges and potential measures for reducing co-payments by low-income patients in light of tight governmental financial resources and rapidly increasing health-care expenditures in Japan. The physicians were also concerned about the moral hazard in health-care utilization among patients receiving social welfare who obtain care at no cost. Conclusions: From their experience in having dealt with low-income patients, the majority of physicians were positive about lowering co-payments by such patients; the remainder were negative or uncertain. It may be necessary to raise awareness of patients' socioeconomic status among primary care physicians as a possible deterrent for seeking care. To maintain health-care equity, policy makers should consider balancing co-payments among individuals with differing financial levels and health-care needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ecological public welfare positions policy, which involves low-income people in ecological conservation work, is an essential practical innovation for China to achieve mutual benefits in ecological protection and poverty alleviation. This study explored the effect of participation in ecological public welfare positions (PEPWP) on farmers' household income composition and clarified the internal mechanism by propensity score matching (PSM) and conditional process analysis, based on the field data from 508 formerly registered impoverished households in Jiangxi Province and Hubei Province, China. Results showed that (1) PEPWP was characterized by "self-selection", which significantly increased farmers' wage level, planting income in Jiangxi Province, and husbandry income in Hubei Province after the elimination of selectivity bias. However, the effect on other sub-incomes was insignificant. (2) There was a moderated mediating model between PEPWP and agricultural income, which demonstrated that farmer's development motivation (FDM) played a partially mediating effect between PEPWP and FDM, and the frequency of skill training (FST) moderated the first part path of this model. (3) EPWP policy steadily increased farmers' income at the vulnerable livelihood level and greatly improved the regional environment. At the same time, it also played an active role in stimulating FDM and rural governance. Conclusions indicated that it was significant to diversify the channels for promoting growth in rural incomes, and pay attention to skill training and the multi-functional role of ecological custodians, in order to activate FDM and assist farmers in eradicating poverty sustainably. [Display omitted] • Reveal the effect of ecological public welfare positions (EPWP) on farmers' income. • EPWP can increase household income accompanying with sub-income diversification. • The impact of EPWP on income is mediated by farmer's development motivation. • Frequency of skill training moderates the internal mechanism of EPWP on income. • The environmental-economic-social benefits of EPWP are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The associations between early life-socioeconomic status and health, specifically substance use, are well substantiated. The vulnerabilities associated with adversity in childhood, particularly poverty, can have a cumulative effect on an individual's risk and resilience throughout the life course. While several studies substantiate the relationship between substance use and welfare participation, less known is the impact of and prevalence of behavioral health problems later in life among young adults who were welfare recipients before age 18.Objective: This article explores whether childhood welfare participation before the age of 18 years influences substance use until young adulthood (24-34 years).Methods: This study used Add Health data with sample sizes ranging from 12,042 to 12,324 respondents, and propensity score matching methods to balance the samples and account for selection bias. Matched data were then used to run a series of regression models.Results: Those who participated in welfare before the age of 18 years had a significant lower probability of remaining substance-free until young adulthood (marijuana-free by 30%, p < 0.001; and other illicit substances-free by 16%, p < 0.05). However, no significant between-group differences were found on any of the alcohol-related variables.Conclusions: Findings highlight long-term behavioral health risks, especially substance use, faced by young adults who participated in welfare before the age of 18 years. Acknowledging the vulnerabilities associated with welfare participation and living in poverty could help increase the effectiveness of program and treatment efforts. The prevention of long-term behavioral health disorders hinges on early diagnosis and intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper provides a rational explanation for the redistribution paradox, whereby low-income individuals seeking more social security prefer a lower taxation although this might imply a reduced welfare. A simple model of tax transfer and redistribution is presented, with various agents facing two different unemployment probabilities. We investigate how the preferred tax rate changes with the probability of being unemployed. We show that, when the probability of unemployment for the less-skilled correlates negatively with that of the highly skilled, the relationship with the tax rate is not monotonic and depends on the level of risk aversion. This theoretical framework is confirmed in an empirical investigation based on microeconomic data, and in a robustness test based on macroeconomic data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the National Food Security Act (NFSA) passed by the Indian Parliament offering albeit, cereals in limited amounts at subsidized prices to the bottom urban and rural populations. Topics discussed include the Act as the largest welfare program undertaken for providing food security and nutrition to poor, replacing the price subsidy with revenue neutral direct unconditional income transfers to benefit extremely poor and no imposition of additional fiscal burden.

Copyright of Revista Criterio Libre is the property of Revista Criterio Libre and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article discusses the economic aspects of social welfare and poverty. The author comments on the financial measurements related to the behavior of poor people who rely on the welfare system and describes how these measurements can drive policy. The use of household surveys, particularly in the determination of economic consumption among the poor, is examined.

We evaluate the large-scale pilot program of an innovative and major welfare intervention in Colombia, which combines home visits by trained social workers to households in extreme poverty with preferential access to social programs. We use a randomized control trial and a very rich data set collected as part of the evaluation to identify program impacts on the knowledge and take-up of social programs and the labor supply of targeted households. We find no consistent impact of the program on these outcomes, possibly because the way the pilot was implemented resulted in very light treatment in terms of home visits. Importantly, administrative data indicate that the program has been rolled out nationally in a very similar fashion, suggesting that this major national program is likely tofail in making a significant contribution to reducing extreme poverty. We suggest that the program should undergo substantial reforms, which in turn should be evaluated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the impact of the state occupation of shrines in Pakistan on pilgrims, with reference to the changes in the social welfare functions of the shrine of Bari Imam after state control. It discusses whether state control is having adverse impact on the shrine's clients who generally belong to minority and marginal groups. It claims that the concept of nationalization (building mosques, schools or libraries at the shrine compounds) serves the urban middle class, not the poor.

The article discusses the work of nonprofit Detroit Action Commonwealth (DAC) and its Detroit Soup Kitchens, with the aim of creating settings for members to experience individual and collective power. Topics discussed include laws and policies that create challenges for impoverished Americans such as federal REAL ID Act, history of DAC, and accomplishments of DAC such as working for the Michigan Department of State to establish a new policy of waiving ID card fees.

'Miserable persons' - including widows, orphans and 'the poor' - were entitled to petition their city governors free of charge, because of their destitution. Which 'poor' qualified for such entitlement is hard to derive from normative sources. Historiography offers inconsistent interpretations. Simona Cerutti, on the one hand, has asserted for eighteenth-century Turin how poverty related first and foremost to ignorance of local laws and lack of local ties, and less to material circumstances. Katherine Lynch, on the other hand, has stressed the importance of early modern poor relief to local poor in the creation of civic communities. If such interpretative scheme is applicable to 'pro deo' petitioning, the local belonging of such petitioners instead of lack of local ties must have been characteristic. A full-text analysis of 213 petitions offered to the Antwerp city government during the eighteenth century helps to explore the nature of poverty of social groups who managed to access the city government free of charge. They did so to acquire some relief in the form of an allowance, an authorisation or-more often than not-the arbitration of interpersonal conflicts. All in all, little pro deo petitions were registered in the so-called rekwestboeken. It appears that only a specific group among the large sections of urban poor qualified for the status of 'persona miserabilis'. They more often than not belonged to the local community, their poverty was a fairly recent experience and related to downward social mobility. The article also argues that only those who found a legal professional willing to help submitting a 'pro deo' petition, managed to do so. In short, the city government of eighteenth-century Antwerp was difficult to approach by lower social groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We approach the problems of measuring the dimensionality of welfare and that of identifying the multidimensionally poor, by first finding the poor using the original space of attributes, and then reducing the welfare space. The starting point is the notion that the "poor" constitutes a group of individuals that are essentially different from the "non-poor" in a truly multidimensional framework. Once this group has been identified through a clustering procedure, we propose reducing the dimension of the original welfare space using recent blinding methods for variable selection. We implement our approach to the case of Latin America based on the Gallup World Poll, which contains ample information on many dimensions of welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bolsa Família, the world's largest conditional cash transfer, provides welfare payments to 13 million Brazilian households – and creates dilemmas for Brazil's rural landless movement, the MST. Through ethnographic analysis in two villages, this paper explores the daily practices and political conceptions of the program's beneficiaries. Bolsa Família does not, as is often believed, create a de-radicalizing sense of contentment. Instead, the program generates a temporality that makes the benefit feel unreliable to beneficiaries. These beneficiaries must mediate the tension between ‘citizen’ and ‘manager’ identities, the latter being a salient subject-position produced by Bolsa Família. The precarity of this position helps explain why Bolsa Família hasnotinspired significant mobilization by social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Objectives. To determine enrollment rates and predictors of enrollment for newly eligible low-income adults in California following the Affordable Care Act's (ACA's) Medicaid expansion. Methods. We used data from the 2014 to 2015 California Health Interview Survey to examine post-ACA Medicaid enrollment rates and multivariable logistic regression to assess the association of demographic factors, income, and health with enrollment. Results.Wefound a 78.5% enrollment rate for the newly eligible Medicaid population, translating to 3.8 million adults enrolled and 1.1 million adults who were eligible but did not enroll. Significant predictors of enrollment were participating in a public welfare program (odds ratio [OR] = 6.59; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 3.09, 14.04), having heart disease (OR = 4.03; 95% CI = 1.34, 12.15), being in the top quartile of income (OR = 3.59; 95% CI = 1.64, 7.85), enrolling in 2015 (OR = 3.28; 95% CI = 1.94, 5.56), being unemployed (OR = 2.10; 95% CI = 1.15, 3.82), and being female (OR = 1.71; 95% CI = 1.03, 2.85).Wedid not find significant disparities across race/ethnicity, education level, or geography. Conclusions. Repeal of Medicaid expansion would have a substantial effect on health insurance coverage among California's low-income adults, many of whom report chronic health conditions and no alternative sources of affordable coverage. Future research should examine the mechanisms explaining the higher enrollment rates among California's Medicaid expansion population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Federal policy changes for Head Start (HS) elevate the importance of measured academic performance over other traditional program aims, particularly those associated with the social-emotional development of children. Concerned about the possible effects of these changes on children, based on observations and interviews, detailed portraits of teachers, parents, and children in a program serving the chronically homeless were constructed. Based on these portraits, the authors conclude that the question that has largely directed studies of HS—“does Head Start do any lasting good?”—is the wrong guiding question for policy. The better question is “What is good for them now?” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The worthiness of welfare recipients has long been questioned. However, their stereotypic depictions have changed throughout the decades. In 1996, The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) authorized drug testing welfare recipients and denial of benefits for testing positive. The subsequent proliferation of drug testing policy proposals in states across the United States raises questions regarding the portrayal of the drug testing target population. We examined state legislators’ public discourse, proponent and opponent, in the welfare drug testing debate, to assess the social construction of welfare recipients. Proponent discursive statements outnumbered opponent statements nearly 5:1. Proponent discourse was overtly derogatory toward and disparaging of welfare recipients. Opponent discourse was generally more sympathetic and supportive of the target population. However, not all opponents were against welfare drug testing in principle or practice. The analysis demonstrates a strong negative construction of welfare recipients as deviants, and indeed as drug abusers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Although the New Poor Law was passed by the Westminster Parliament, it was implemented at the most local level through newly established parochial boards. By tracing the case of a Paisley widow in need of poor relief through the changing landscape of the Scottish Poor Law in the 1850s, this article analyses the changing interpretation of the law regarding widows' settlements and highlights the interplay between local bodies and higher courts in interpreting the law. Individual experience and practice in localities worked together to create a national system that reflected Scottish understandings of gender, marriage, and independence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few empirical studies have explored how microfinance institutions (MFIs) reach important social goals such as outreach to the poor. While MFIs have the dual goals of pursuing both social and economic values, the impact of their profitability on outreach can vary. Based on the institutional logics perspective, this study predicts that if MFIs follow commercial logic, they are more likely to pursue high profitability rather than to increase outreach; however, if MFIs follow social-welfare logic, they tend to tolerate relatively low profitability and try their best to extend outreach. Therefore, in the curve of distribution of MFIs' profitability, there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between MFIs' profitability and outreach to the poor. This relationship is further influenced by a state-level institution-the rule of law. For our empirical analyses, we use a data set of 3,785 organization-year observations from 1,129 MFIs across 98 countries. The results of multilevel mixed models are consistent with our predictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poverty analytical approaches have recently considered households' deprivation in several welfare attributes in what has been tagged multidimensional poverty. This approach has been well embraced due to acceptability of human development indices as a parameter for comparing welfare across different segments of the population. In this study, non-monetary indicators of welfare were aggregated into composite welfare indicator for pro-poor growth assessment. The 1999, 2003 and 2008 Demographic and Health Survey data were analyzed using the poverty equivalent growth rate (PEGR) and growth incidence curves (GICs). Results show that although sometimes pro-poor, non-income growth rates in many of the zones and states were negative between 1999 and 2003. In the 2003-2008 period, some more positive values were obtained. Specifically, between 1999 and 2003, there was pro-poor growth in non-income poverty in the north-western zone with urban areas benefiting more than rural areas. In the North East zone, there was pro-poor growth between 1999 and 2003, while none was pro-poor between 2003 and 2008. In the North Central zone, all the sectoral results for between 1999 and 2003 had negative growth rates. In South West zone, the growth rates for all the analyses are with negative growth rates between 1999 and 2003. In the South South zone, all the sectoral results had negative growth rates and pro-poor. In South East zone, between 1999 and 2003, all the sectoral results are with positive growth rates and pro-poor. In the combined households (Nigeria) analysis, that all the results had negative growth rates. There is therefore the need for ensuring proper monitoring of non-income poverty across different zones and states in order to ensure adequacy of different mechanisms for tackling it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Estimates show only 56 percent of poor households who are eligible for benefits under the Program of Advancement Through Health and Education (PATH) in Jamaica actually applied to the program. Also, application rate among urban households is approximately half the rate that exists among poor rural households. This study investigates potential reasons for the relatively low application rate. Using data compiled by the Statistical Institute of Jamaica (STATIN), we conclude that single male household heads are two to four times less likely to apply for benefits compared to households headed by females and married couples. Problems regarding information about PATH and the complexity of the application process have the greatest impact on the decision not to apply. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over recent decades, vagrancy has been deinstitutionalised and a welfare approach has been developed in which the problem definition of “vagrancy”, perceived as a criminal problem, has shifted into a problem of “homelessness”, defined as a poverty problem. In this article, we discuss the findings of a case study in Ghent, Belgium, in which the implications of this welfare approach to homelessness in social work practices are examined. The research method involved interviews with social workers and coordinators of homelessness care programs, analysis of policy documents and observations of intake conversations. The following issues are discussed: (1) conditionality in regular homelessness care; (2) conditionality in organisations that are directly accessible; (3) counterproductive dynamics of residual care; and (4) invisibility of those labelled as “care avoiders”. In our concluding reflections, we argue that a new sort of institutionalisation of the problem of homelessness can be identified. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The working-class is typically regarded as the driving force of welfare state development. Yet, some argue that the middle-classes' beneficial involvement in the welfare state is crucial for its financial sustainability and popular legitimacy. Against this backdrop, we investigate how recent welfare state reforms in Germany which affect the status of the middle-class are viewed and discussed by this group. Germany is a particularly interesting case because its welfare state is seen to be centred on the desires of the middle-class, especially through its focus on status maintenance and horizontal redistribution over the life-course. However, the move from status maintenance to minimum income support in unemployment provision and the strengthening of private old age provision challenge this assumption. Thus, we ask how the German middle-class views the emerging abandonment of the principle of status maintenance and the shift from collective to individual responsibility. Based on qualitative material from focus groups, we find that individual responsibility is generally supported, but that the state is still assigned responsibility for providing basic levels of social security. Furthermore, for those groups seen as less capable of acting individually responsible (e.g. the poor or long-term unemployed) the 'inducement' of -- or assistance for -- individually responsible behaviour by the state is demanded. Overall, while the principle of 'individual responsibility' seems to find some resonance among the middle-class members interviewed, they still try to balance individual and collective responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Soziale Welt is the property of Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paper discusses the peripheral relationships within a state's public school: circumstantial and singular occurrences defined by poverty and actual interference for improvements in the living conditions of the population. These are preliminary results of an investigation of ethnographic inspiration conducted in a school located in the metropolitan region of Porto Alegre (Rio Grande do Sul State), where 75% of the children are from families receiving regular payments from the government (Bolsa Família Program - Family Grant). Based on daily field notes, observations and open interviews, we tried to understand to what extent the Bolsa Família Program, which aims to inhibit child labor and keep children in school, is contributing to the improvement of process of teaching and learning in that place. The theoretical base of this paper is based on the work of Zygmunt Bauman. The study shows that, in that context, the Bolsa Família program is sometimes criticized by the teaching staff of the school, due to its welfare characteristic and it is sometimes used as an excuse to ignore students' absences, under the argument that the school cannot cause conflicts with the families. In both cases, the people of the place are being harmed: first, because the income redistribution has been a way of discursively disqualifying their existence and second, because when children have their absences ignored, the commitment of the family with the teaching process is automatically being dismissed. Furthermore, the results of evaluations, such as "Prova Brasil", that analyzes socioeconomic and educational information, are misinterpreted because the low scores tend to indicate the ineffectiveness of a program that was not actually introduced in the school context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the role of interactions with local leaders in amplifying poor households' investment response to a social programme. The causal effect of social interactions is identified through the randomised assignment of leaders and other beneficiaries to three different interventions aimed at increasing human capital and productive investments. Social interactions are found to augment programme impacts on households' investments in education, nutrition and income-generating activities and to affect households' attitudes towards the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses 30 accounts of income and expenditure left by Collectors for the Poor in Elizabethan England, before the period known as the old poor law. Collectors were appointed by parishes and incorporated boroughs in accordance with the poor laws of 1552 and 1563, but few of their fragile records survive. The accounts examined here document early use of compulsory rates to provide income, but several features of the distribution of relief differ from patterns common in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Adult male recipients outnumbered women in many of the parishes; children were frequently helped directly; and cities and towns assisted a smaller fraction of their total populations than did villages but awarded larger per capita payments. Accounts from the 10 villages and small towns analysed most fully show that Elizabethan Collectors were moving away from the late medieval practice of providing only occasional aid; increasingly they awarded regular payments to a selected subset of the local poor. Comparison with the early seventeenth century suggests that the poor laws of 1598 and 1601 contributed to a transition that was already underway but did not create a new system of relief. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]